Picture Books in the EFL Classroom (eBook)

Document from the year 2020 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, University of Education Freiburg im Breisgau, language: English, abstract: This article is about the benefits of picture books in foreign language teaching in elementary school. Different picture books are presented on the basis of Irma Ghosn's reasons.

The first step is to determine whether children's books, as authentic literature, have a motivating context for language learning. In order to check whether a book is really motivating, various aspects such as storyline, theme, language and illustration must be considered. Irma Ghosn uses "The Hungry Caterpillar" to show and explain these aspects. "We're going on a Bear Hunt"
by Michael Rosen (2003) is another good example to show these aspects. The book is about a family outing where the children imagine that they are hunting a bear. For this, they have to overcome various obstacles. Between the obstacles, the bear hunt is put into foreground in a kind of marching song. When they discover the bear, they flee and must go through the obstacles again to get back to their house. The theme of the book is a journey of discovery that every child can identify with. The curiosity and imagination of a child is clearly visible in the story and also the unstoppable urge of children to discover. Ghosn (2002) also states that a storyline should remain open to different interpretations. Here, the story offers that it's unclear if they really meet a bear in the end or if they just make it up. Moreover, it remains open to what extent the obstacles really are of the big scale described in the story.